sturt

Hi, the Nugget Finder 17x13 evo is fantastic for depth but may miss a few smaller pieces. Over here the 17x13 has held its price fairly stable and you dont see many second hand on the market. Must be good. The spoked version is obviously the lightest option but sometimes rubbing it along the surface for maximum sensitivity can cause the machine to give off false signals, expecially if you catch a rock or stick between the spokes. Not sure if you can get a full scrub plate for the bottom to help you glide over the ground. Anyway a great light weight coil for covering a lot of ground. You tried to lift the GPZ 7000 yet? Now thats heavy, cheers sturt

Maybe if you find yellow Koala then your onto a hot spot?

Hi Jin. I just returned from a trip out WA Bush. I have been experimenting with lots of settings as well. The last two days I reduced the sensitivity fairly low in difficult, high yeild and ferrite balanced on Auto. Had two great days finding small nuggets at a location which has been hammered over many years. I will attach a photo. First day picked up 18 pieces and Second 22 pieces. Not high value but very rewarding. The total area would have been maybe 30m x 30m. Sorry the photo is not real good, but you can see where somebody had dug holes and left them open some time back. I hate that. One hole on the right side of photo. I found nuggets around the sides of existing dig holes. What type of detector was used I have no idea. The ground was very clean of trash and had been scraped by a loader a long time back. Underneath the surface say 150mm down was hard Calcrete. Certainly made the pick bounce but most targets where above the hard stuff. Now after looking at JP posts I`m having cold sweats thinking about reverting to Semi auto then do to manual balance when you want to check for deeper targets. I cant wait to get back. I dug a few holes into the calcrete trying to get clarification on some signals. Eventially I gave up in disgust thinking it was ground noise, a waste of time. Probably me upsetting the balance when digging. Hope nobody finds my patch, cheers sturt

Hi JP. Been watching a lot your work out in the scrub during the years. Thanks for your time very helpful. I`m over in the WA side and need to put my bit in. Even though new to this forum I have gone through the 4500 to 5000 to 7000 series over the years. I look at the posts from persons telling me how good the new x coils work but to me over here I work over old grounds flogged over the years full of hot rocks and minerals. Most areas have been scraped by blades to flatten the ground and get the coils as close as possible to the ground. I am picking up small nuggets usually within 50mm from the surface. The average size is 0.1 grams. I will include a photo of some pieces collected from the Leonora area four weeks ago. So it may take all day to get a gram but I enjoy the struggle, then every now and then out pops a beauty. I use the ML14" coil with the skid plate bouncing on the ground (carefully). I have to run in difficult all the time, high yield, sensitivity 20, threshold 1, vol 12 with the VM12 unit, ground balance auto, all smoothing off. The coil works nice and quiet as long as you balance properly at the start and take your time. I have picked up a lot of small stuff that people and machines have left behind. Any nuggets greater that 1 gram set the machine off so loud that it wakes you up with a fright. In high mineral ground give it a try. All in all the ML14" suits me to a tee. Okay a bit heavy, but I swing without needing a harness and the coil takes a lot of punishment from me. Enjoy the bush out there all, cheers Sturt.

Would love to try a Nugget finder coil 17x11 on my zed. I went from a 5000 series with an older series nugget finder coil. Great combo and found plenty. But now im going over areas ive already walked over and picking up what I missed. Just wish the standard zed coils are a bit lighter.